Jackson Street Blues

Martha Mier is an American composer and educator (Alfred Music) whose Jazz, Rags & Blues series has been one of the most-played introductions to early-jazz piano in the English-speaking world for thirty years. Jackson Street Blues (Book 4) takes the twelve-bar blues form and gives it a clear teaching shape: blue-note melody in the right hand, walking-bass pattern in the left, swing feel throughout.

Technically the piece tests three things at once: a swung quaver feel (the score notates straight quavers but the performance must swing them), a steady walking bass that walks in single beats with the occasional broken-chord moment, and a confident blue-note inflection in the right-hand line. The articulation is mostly legato with a few accented blues turns; the dynamic profile is bright.

Two pitfalls. First, students play the quavers straight — the blues feel collapses into early-Classical evenness. Train the swing feel by listening to PD blues recordings before opening the score. Second, the walking bass becomes louder than the melody; bring it back to mp and let the right hand sing.

Listening: PD recordings of early jazz piano (James P. Johnson, Jelly Roll Morton — selected on Musopen) calibrate the swing and walking-bass feel that Mier's piece teaches.